


What's A Little Necromancy Between Friends?

by Omicheese



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Don't copy to another site, Gen, background Moircy, if surgery grosses you out this might not be for you though, technically there's no violence because the man in question is already dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 22:17:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21168764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omicheese/pseuds/Omicheese
Summary: Blackwatch was just about to get some intel from the inside of the Shimada organization when their source winds up dead.Well, why let a little thing like that stop them?





	What's A Little Necromancy Between Friends?

**Author's Note:**

> Happy halloween, everybody! Have some spooky Frankensteinish hijinks! This AU is essentially Overwatch as is, but if everything had a fantasy explanation rather than a sci-fi one (because the science is already tenuous at best.) My dear friend Melissa betaed this for me.

What a fucking day. What a fucking _day_. Of all the news he could have gotten… “Jesse!” Gabriel barked, all but kicking the door of the rec room down. “Business.”

“I’m on break.” Jesse used his free hand to point to Angela, who was holding a matching cup of coffee and looking alarmed. The kid knew it wasn’t appropriate to talk about work in front of her. Blackwatch business stayed within Blackwatch.

But you know what? Fuck it. Gabriel was mad, and it wasn’t like it mattered who heard this information _now._ Not anymore, anyway. “Whatever. Remember how our agent was this close to getting someone from the Shimada organization to flip and give us some information? I just learned that that guy was the current head honcho’s 23-year-old baby brother.”

“Holy shit.” Jesse set his coffee down. He looked hopeful—smart kid like that, he knew what that would mean. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. Other thing I learned is that he’s dead now.”

Gabriel could see the hope slide off Jesse’s face. “Well, fuck.” After a moment, he asked, “Are you sure? How dead are we talking?”

“Like Hino just sent me half the kid’s body in a bag.” No sense sugar-coating it.

“Jesus.” Jesse’s eyes widened. “They sliced him in half? People still _do_ that?”

Gabriel shrugged. “Honestly, it looks more like a third of him. Like the only things still attached are a head, an arm, and part of a torso. It’s pretty brutal. And now,” putting the human compassion aside and bringing it back to the job, “we’re out of leads.”

“Well, fuck!” Jesse pulled his hat off and slapped it on the table. “That was our big chance!”

“_Tell_ me about it.” Gabriel slumped into the nearest chair and stole Jesse’s coffee.

Angela looked nervous. She was biting her lip, eyes flicking between the two of them. Gabriel did feel a little bad for bringing her into this. Still, she’d been hanging around Overwatch for as long as Jesse had, she was discreet, and she was fucking O’Deorain anyway, so better Angela than anyone else from the main branch. Not Blackwatch, but not _completely_ uninvolved. She asked, “Did you really need to talk to him?”

“I feel like I made that pretty clear,” Gabriel bitched, pounding the rest of Jesse’s coffee back. He knew he’d have to get the kid another one to make up for it, but Gabriel felt like he needed it more right now.

“How _much_ would you say you needed to talk to him?”

Gabriel sighed. If he was going to drag her into it, he may as well bring her up to speed. “The Shimada are notoriously secretive. They don’t function like your average yakuza, or else our guys could’ve handled it all by now. They _definitely_ have some unique kind of magic going on, and there’s no way we’re going to understand how that works without a man on the inside. And they’re wrecking Japan, so we have to do _something_. We’ve been working on this for months, and this brat was our only lead. So yeah, a lot. Answer your question?”

Angela sipped her coffee, frowning. But then she said, “Maybe I can do something.”

He almost laughed. “Angie, honey, he’s _dead_.” She might be the best healer and white magician in the business, but it was a little late for that.

Angela made direct eye contact with Gabriel and held it. “Maybe I can do something,” she said again.

Wait a minute. Holy shit. _Holy shit._ He started grinning. “Why, _Angela Ziegler._ I never would have expected this from you. Our Doc has hidden depths!”

Her cheeks went red immediately. “I just—I think I might be able help, that’s all. If you let me look.”

“But a necromancer? Really? Goody two-shoes like you?”

She scrunched up her face and tried to look anywhere but at him. The blush had gone all the way out to her ears. “I’ve never done this before!” she insisted.

“_Riiiiight_,” Gabriel teased, mood already improving. Who’d’ve thought this was how the day was going to turn out? “Of _course_ not. Wouldn’t _dream_ of it.”

“Do you want to talk to him or not!?”

“Yeah, definitely! Jesse’ll get that body for you, I’ll go get approval from Jack. See you in twenty. Come on, _mijo_.”

*

Jack Morrison was minding his own business. There was a lot of stupid paperwork to do, and people had been bothering him in his office all morning. It was turning into one of those days where he really regretted taking the strike commander job.

Gabe stuck his head in through the open office door, probably to give him another damn thing to work on. Jack didn’t even bother to look up. “Hey, Jack? Angela’s a necromancer and she volunteered to resurrect a dead yakuza kid for me. Are we good?”

Jack blinked, then turned around in his swivel chair very slowly. “…Start again from the top of that sentence.”

*

“So, Doc, what’s the prognosis?” Gabriel had brought Morrison with him to the morgue, and he stood watching Angela, grinning. Jesse stood a few paces behind them, his work in this scene already done.

Part of a dead Japanese kid was lying on the cold table. Nearly turned Jesse’s stomach to lay him out there. Jesse’d handled plenty of corpses in his time, made more than his fair share, but this was a lot more than a dose of lead. The kid had been chopped right at the shoulder and below the ribcage, and it looked like he’d been roughed up even before the final blow. The guts had probably all fallen out even before he’d been bagged up and shipped over. He wasn’t bleeding, not anymore, but that didn’t make it any easier to look at.

Angela was the consummate professional. There was a reason Overwatch had hired her when they did, as young as she said she was then. She wore a mask and gloves, prodding gently here and there, at one point reaching up into the chest cavity and feeling around. Eventually she nodded and stepped back. “Okay… This is going to take some effort, but I think it’s possible.”

“Well, you’d know best,” Morrison told her. Jesse was still amazed that they’d gotten permission for this. “What do you need?”

“I’ve never done this before!” Angela reminded them. “And I’m not positive it’s going to work.”

“Of _course_ not, Angela.” Gabriel rolled his eyes. “What do you need?”

“Er…” 

“We already know you’re a necromancer, Angela.” That was Gabriel’s _cut the crap_ voice. “Stop being so embarrassed and tell us what you need.”

“Pieces?” Angela had taken her mask off, and she was grimacing like even saying the words would hurt someone’s feelings. “Organs? There isn’t much here to work with. Everything under the thorax is missing, and it looks like one of the lungs is compromised.”

“Some donor corpses.” Gabriel nodded. “Got it.”

“It doesn’t all have to come from the same source, and I can sew dead flesh to dead flesh without a problem, but he would definitely need to be whole. I can’t retrieve a soul without a body to put it in.”

“But once you’ve pieced him together you could revive him?” Morrison checked with her. “Long enough for him to answer some questions?”

She pressed her lips together, frowning, but eventually nodded. “…Yes, I should be able to do that. He’ll never be entirely alive again, though,” she warned. “I can only get close.”

“That’d be fine!” Gabriel clapped her on the shoulder as he and Morrison left the room. “You’re the best necromancer I’ve ever met, Angela.”

“I’ve never done this before!!”

Jesse stayed back to help Angela put what was left of the kid into one of those morgue freezers. They couldn’t have him putrefying before she could work her magic. As he shut the door, Jesse asked her, “Can you actually do all that stuff you said you could?”

It seemed like she’d been holding her breath in all this time, and she could finally let it out. “I am technically capable of it, yes. In this particular case, yes. I’m confident of that. The real question is whether I _should_.”

Jesse shrugged. “Well, you did tell Reyes and Morrison you’d try,” but that didn’t necessarily mean she had to follow through. Angela wasn’t Blackwatch—the main branch generally tried to avoid doing anything they’d regret. “Is it one of those equivalent exchange things? Is something terrible gonna happen if you do?”

Angela gave him a flat look. “You work with Moira, right? Has she been making you watch anime? That sounds like a stupid anime question.”

“Nah,” he laughed, “watched that one with an old friend of mine. But I get your point. If that’s the case, then what’s the harm?”

She sighed, her eyes making her look much older than the rest of her did. “Death can be very traumatic.”

“I don’t doubt that. But are we talking _Pet Sematary_?”

“No, I don’t think so. With the way this works, he should be entirely himself. But he might not be happy about it.”

“Then all that happens is the kid gets another shot, right? I personally don’t see any problem with that.” Jesse couldn’t help but take another look back at that freezer. “23’s awful young to die. But still, it’s your call at the end of the day. If you ain’t comfortable with it, you don’t have to. Remember that.”

*

“So,” Moira’s lip quirked upward when Angela told her about it at home that night, “what would you call this? Extreme healing? Late healing?”

Angela buried her face in her hands. This was not going how she wanted it to. “Do you have to rub it in? I’m still a healer, this isn’t my usual… you know.”

Moira rested a comforting hand on her shoulder and passed her a beer. “No need to be embarrassed about your own skillset. I find it most impressive, myself. You know I’ve always been interested in this sort of thing.”

“So are you willing to help me with the procedure, then?” Angela asked, looking up.

“Certainly.”

“I’d be performing the magic myself, but I’d like your help with… er… reconstruction.”

“That’s something I’d like to ask you about, actually,” Moira added, cracking open her own beer. “What does he need to be whole for? I’ve seen skeleton armies. They work just fine in pieces. As a matter of fact, I understand that’s half the point.”

Angela frowned. “Skeleton armies can’t answer questions, and that is what Reyes needs him to do.”

Moira paused, beer halfway to her lips, and set it down again. “…You’re not trying to animate a body—you’re trying to bring him _back_.”

“I’m going to _try_.”

Moira got that glow of scientific curiosity in her eyes. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing that successfully before. And I’ve read a _lot_ of studies. And authored a few. It’s possible in theory if you act fast enough, but this one’s been dead for at least a week now. There are no documented instances of that working. Folktales aplenty, but documented instances?”

“I think that it’s something I can do,” Angela said confidently, leaving it at that. “Do you want to help me or not?”

A smile crept across Moira’s face as she leaned in. “I would like nothing better.”

*

Operation day. All materials on the table, audio recording running, the very model of an autopsy in reverse. Reyes buzzed into the intercom from the other side of the glass: “You ladies ready to start?”

Moira had her needle and thread handy and the appropriate donor limbs already cut to fit. But she couldn’t resist this opportunity. She looked at the corpse and said, _“You are already dead.”_

Angela rolled her eyes in a huge dramatic gesture. “Oh _don’t_ you start with that anime nons—”

Reyes buzzed in again: “Quit flirting and get working!”

“Excuse you, Commander. I was making a very funny joke.”

“No you weren’t,” Angela chided.

The work went simply, at least to begin with. Moira, despite having some healing ability, had more experience in taking corpses apart than in putting them back together, but all in all it was a comparable process. It was when attaching the new lung that things began to go off-script.

“Dr. Ziegler.” Moira’s hands were still in the ribcage when she noticed. “This heart is still warm.”

“Mmhmm.” Angela, busy stringing intestines together, didn’t seem to be paying attention.

“Why is his heart warm? He’s been on ice for three weeks.”

“Mmhmm.”

Moira leaned in to peak through the ribs. “…Angela, it’s warm and it’s _glowing green._”

Finally Angela looked up. “I know. That’s why I know that this is going to work.”

“…Was he even human to start with?” Moira was beginning to feel that she had not been given all the relevant information.

“He is, but he’s… atypical.”

_Fascinating._ Someone with magic so deeply ingrained that even death hadn’t removed it. Moira had never seen a specimen like this before. This warranted further study. “…Can I collect a sample?”

“No!”

“Oh Angela,” Moira sighed, throwing a hand to her own heart and getting blood all over her scrubs, “how do you expect me to further my research?”

Angela sounded hurt. “I’m letting you work with me!”

“I was joking.”

“I know,” it was clear that Angela was pouting behind her surgical mask, “but the heart _needs_ to remain intact, or this isn’t going to work. And anyway, he hasn’t consented to your experimentation, and you know that violates official Overwatch ethics policy.”

Not that Moira ever gave a damn about that, but… “Speaking as we are of violations, did he consent to this resurrection?”

“…Well.” Angela froze mid-stitch. “No. But after he’s done answering Reyes’s questions, if he doesn’t like it, we can just kill him again, no harm done. And the other man had a donor card.”

The mental hoops Angela jumped through so that she could sleep at night were enough to make Moira laugh, though now was probably not the best time. “How could he be killed?”

“Stab to the heart. It’s the only thing he needs intact.”

“Like a vampire? …Angela, are we creating an artificial vampire?”

Angela looked scandalized. “No!” But then her eyes narrowed and she looked worried. “No…” She shook her head with a quick, “No.” Then she hissed through her teeth. “Not _exactly_.”

“Go on.”

“There’s no curse aspect. He won’t be harmed by sunlight or garlic, he won’t be nocturnal, and he won’t have to drink blood. So no. But… In terms of physical condition and, er, murderability, very similar, yes.”

“I’m so glad we’re recording all of this.”

“Oh, hush.”

Assembling a human body was a rather lengthy process, but finally Moira was polishing off the last few seams. Finally she stepped back to admire her own work. All organs were in their appropriate cavities, all skin grafts were complete, and if the man hadn’t been so clearly deceased, he would have looked quite well.

Angela, her gloves removed and her hands washed, spread her fingers across the man’s chest. Angela’s magic wasn’t quite like anyone else’s. This would be the hardest part of the procedure to replicate in future tests. Moira had long since suspected that Angela’s incantations were just for show. The magic came directly from her person, and not from any education she’d had. She had more in common with this corpse than she let on.

Suddenly there was an almost blinding flash of green light.

Reyes’s voice came through the intercom: “What. The fuck. Was that.”

Moira watched Angela, who didn’t even seem surprised.

“Was that a _dragon?_” Reyes asked.

Angela closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Let’s begin.”

*

Genji Shimada opened his eyes.

~

…

…

…

“Here’s my point. Dr. Winston just reincorporated a disembodied woman, Angela brought a dead man back to life, Specimen 6 exhibits vital signs despite being encased in ice that dates back 100 years, and Reinhardt Wilhelm _exists:_ ergo, death is negotiable, and I intend to figure out its limits.”

Reyes leaned back in his office chair and frowned. “I don’t think Overwatch is gonna like the sound of that.”

“Which is why,” Moira leaned forward to rest an elbow on his desk, “I came to speak to _you._”

~

**Author's Note:**

> You never have to worry about retcon when it's an AU. I may do more.
> 
> If you caught my stupid anime jokes, I appreciate you.


End file.
